Frank Heydenrych is executive chairman of Predictive Communications. He writes for ITWeb in his personal capacity.
Articles
In today`s market, where perception is reality, it is clear that publicity creates brand and advertising reinforces the message.
To ensure smooth deliverables, work backwards! Identifying what outcome you want to achieve with your PR allows you to work backwards to a definite goal.
There are many categories of news and lumping them all together creates an unfair expectation that lies at the heart of so many ructions between client and PR.
There`s more to evaluating the impact of good PR than by counting column centimetres or minutes of air time, particularly as you cannot correlate value with cost.
Being read is what it`s all about and if you`ve done your homework correctly, you can see your words cascade into two-dimensional form on newsprint, to be consumed with interest by a voracious public.
As PRs depend entirely on value being added at each point in the value chain, managing the process of pre-preparation, interview, write-up and sign-off is critical to ensuring successful delivery of quality editorial.
For PR to work all links in the value chain must be in synch and the various players must understand where they fit in.
American-style PR is entering the SA market like some noxious weed. It`s pervasive, it`s deadly, it chokes and once rooted it`s impossible to remove.
Ensuring every player in the value chain gets fair value is the key to successful PR, especially as it takes extraordinary commitment from those who sign the cheques, and those who write and place the stories.
In a world where knowledge is power, it is vital that PR practitioners and their clients go all out to provide real, value-added information by initiating a conduit for releasing and transferring knowledge.
An MD is ideally positioned to drive and fulfill a company's public relations strategy, but most companies do not realise that their MDs are vital PR tools.